Crops that should have been harvested, instead are being fed to animals as Portugal’s drought continues to hit the agricultural sector, especially in southern Portugal which dried out three months earlier than usual.
The Minister of Agriculture, Capoulas Santos, now has signed a key document to confirm that these drought conditions are official and to enable farmers to apply for financial help.
A recently appointed agency doctor, who started work at the Monchique Health Centre last Thursday, collapsed and died at work on Friday morning.
The regional health authority, faced with two doctors officially retiring this year, says that the municipality will be covered, after some rescheduling and redeployment within the region. A replacement doctor is to be found.
Portugal's judiciary has handed out harsh sentences in the past, but issuing the death penalty to two Chinese citizens, whose daughter died when they went out gambling in a Lisbon casino, was exceptional - and wrong.
The parents of the five-year-old Chinese girl, who died in February 2016 after falling from the 21st floor of a tower block in the Parque das Nações in Lisbon, were back in China when they received notification of the death penalty which, as they had not realised this was a translation error, caused them to suffer stress and no small degree of despair.
An almost nightly ritual of punch-ups in Albufeira’s Oura district continue with two tourists injured in the early hours of Tuesday.
One of those involved, a 17-year-old Norwegian youth, suffered minor injuries and was transported by firefighters to Faro hospital.
With locals leaving the country to find work in more developed economies, the number of foreigners choosing to live in Portugal jumped to nearly 400,000 by the end of 2016, with 83% working and much of the remainer, retired.
The number of non-Portuguese living in the country increased by 2.3% in 2016, reversing a downward trend that had been worrying government since 2010.
The 36th annual Faro motorbike festival is over and a more normal, bumper-to-bumper, pace returns to the region’s roads.
The organiser and president of the Moto Clube de Faro, José Amaro, said there were no accidents that he was aware of, that 25,000 people attended the festival, everything went well and that the authorities were happy with behaviour.
The Ministry of Defence has authorised a spend of €700 million to modernise the Armed Forces with almost half of the budget going to the Portuguese-Brazilian partnership, Embraer, for the purchase of KC-390 aircraft.
The aim is for Portugal to play catch-up with NATO allies and nine of a dozen purchase projects already have been signed off by Defence Minister, José Azeredo Lopes, with delivery times stretching to 2026.
The high alert status for most of Portugal is well deserved as over 1,200 firefighters battle 31 blazes this Sunday.
Sertã and Coimbra are the most serious affected with the A13 cut-off to traffic as 11 helicopters and aircraft swoop in to dump water. Temperatures hover in the mid-30s with winds spreading fires faster than they can be contained.
